


Gifts Given

by Lavender_Seaglass



Series: And then came the rest [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, family stuff, how parent, is this a fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2347850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Seaglass/pseuds/Lavender_Seaglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has responsibilities, even four-year-old Lucina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts Given

**Author's Note:**

> As a quick note, I wrote these drabbles with a timeline that is chronological according to bad!future Lucina's perspective. This means that the series starts initially in the bad!future, and then, after the death of Chrom, returns back to the past where the game itself starts.

For her fourth birthday Lucina is gifted a young hummingbird. Among all the presents she's been given, she's most taken by this one from a lesser noble house. Unaware of the political posturing her father's pressured into because of it, she declares the bird the best and has it and its white willow cage installed notably in her room.

Her parents don't say no. They give her warnings—this is her first pet. It's a big responsibility. Does she not want to try with bugs or fish first? But she's youthful and set. Their attempts at bargaining only deepen her thoroughly dug trench, and in the end they do realise that the servants who clean the cage can also care for the creature.

The iridescent bird flutters and flutters, zips and zips around its cage. The staccato movements delight her four year old mind. She's enthralled by greens and blues and blacks and motion and sees all of this in one teeny brimming package. When the little avian hovers mere centimetres from her face, she giggles.

“I'm going to be that fast”, she says to her mother, her father. Chrom's carrying her, and she kicks at his back as she demonstrates just how quickly she'll run. “'nd I'll swing my sword that fast, too!” She hesitates. She's suddenly unsure of herself because some part of her understands that _no_ , it's not possible for it to be so, it doesn't matter how much she wants it, but she looks to her parents for reassurance. “Right, Father?”

“Absolutely. You'll be my little zephyr with Falchion, and no-one will be able to catch you.”

“Yes!” she says. She ignores the word she doesn't understand to focus on all the rest that she does. She'll be amazing. Another thing she understands is that her bedtime is near. So she stalls. She looks back to the bird—her pet—and strains for questions.

“What may I name it?”

“Anything you want. She's yours.”

“Okay! How about...Uh.”

“Stuck? Well, how about you sleep on it, and you can name her in the morning,” Robin cuts in. She smiles at Lucina while guiding Chrom by the elbow over to their daughter's bed. He gets it—he wants to retire himself, though what's really happening, he understands, is that _she_ has several hours of reading piled up on her desk, and the longer they are here, the longer that's keeping her up. Robin signals to Chelsa the nursemaid that it's the princess's bedtime.

“But I can think of a name now! It'll be great.”

“You can think of one way better in your dreams, and then you can tell us tomorrow, all right?”

“But tomorrow's all the way until tomorrow.”

“I know, sweetheart, but we'll be here. And Chelsa and Auntie Lis and all of the other people you love.”

Lucina considers this. With her unadulterated four-year-old's-certainty, she deems that this is acceptable. Still, she insists that her father put her down and her mother sing her a song. Robin remains seated on her bed through a poorly enunciated lullaby—the words are still surprisingly hard for her to remember, and learn. Lucina's much more musical father assists, and their voices are enough to lull the girl. They could be singing a dirge in a foreign language, just as long as its their voices that are there to give her security.

 

.

 

As expected, Robin crawls into bed hours after Chrom has retired. He's waited up for her.

Without a word he draws her against him. Into her back he whispers thanks and love. And then the refrain of a long-ended prayer:

_But could you take it easier?_

Her work ethic continues to be a reason for admiration, but lately he's started to worry about it. She's becoming _too_ involved. Somehow.

She, of course, can't hear what he's whispered for herself, cannot feel it or sense it, of that he's sure. Otherwise she wouldn't have relaxed so readily into the warm protective embrace he has enshrouded her in, wouldn't have fallen asleep without a word herself.

And, once more, he vows to address it in the morning.

 

…

 

That summer Lucina begins her first lessons in maths, reading, and writing. Her tutor means well, but mostly she splatters ink around and endures an epic stand-off with the concept of a straight line. Robin, who volunteers to be Lucina's history tutor in the future, spends time picking out textbooks and reading material for her daughter. This is a subject Robin herself doesn't know much about.

So her plan is to learn with her daughter. She also simply _has_ to. It's well known that Valmese ships have been appearing from over the sea. They've been engaging merchants and naval forces in maritime skirmishes, though to what extent exactly isn't something any one person can fully know. The merchant guilds don't track each other's ships, and the Plegians aren't sharing their information.

Ylisse itself has lost ships too, but no-one's sure if it's to Valm or nature or increasingly common privateers. Their fleet's status has been sketchy the past few years; the navy was only partially rebuilt after the war. Most of the Plegian reparations granted to the naval division of the army were spent to pay for abjectly needed repairs and rearmaments, though most of the reparations were used elsewhere anyway, on things much more likely to yield quick returns and ease suffering—rebuilding infrastructure, compensating families, paying soldiers and mercenaries to ensure enough hands to bring in the harvest.

And then there are the recent rumours of a stolen Feroxi treasure, and whispers of an actual invasion.

Robin knows nothing of Valm. This is unacceptable of a tactician in her position.

So her poring over tomes, scrolls, and august accounts is her effort to remain relevant. She's driven by an anxious determination. She's easily excitable at this time: she becomes a tedious tea companion who ends up monologuing about Valmese social customs, and the compendium of her notes on her reading has accumulated into several scrolls. Her clerk one day asks her if she would like him to start copying them out and have them bound into a proper book for the library. They always could use an updated commentary on a foreign culture's ways.

Instead she has the clerk prepare a report of what _he_ knows about Valm. He worries that he knows more hearsay and rumour than fact, but her point is that she wants his observations. If she didn't allow for those two things, hearsay and rumour being what they are, she wouldn't study historical texts or texts about history. She would have to stick to ledgers crumbling and thoroughly masticated by vermin.

Robin spends at least two hours a day on this study. Currently she's halfway through her usual regime, having spent an hour on a framing for Valm's history as accounted by a manakete scholar. The rise and fall of the empires of humanity is a natural phenomenon for this scholar. He cites the paucity of nations that have lasted as long as one of his kin, let alone a successful empire spanning so long. Though their collapse, he admits, may appear as sudden to a human.

She notes, _Manakete society must be structured differently out of necessity; need different structures to last. Ref Gom 11.3 Sec. 4.7_. She dips her quill, taps the end against its blown-glass pot, ensures that not too much ink is taken, and scratches out several more lines in her condensed scribble. Between lines, someone walks in.

She gauges that it's her husband: his limp is distinctive after the assassination attempt, and her clerk rises to his feet as per custom. He bows and says, “Milord.”

“Good day,” Chrom returns. A gesture allows the clerk to resume his work.

She nods at her husband, pleased. Though she wants to work, her attention is pulled to Chrom. He becomes the focus of the room, the gravity between them the centre. She makes to stand up. He comes over to where she is and stands behind her chair. From there he reads bits of the various things she has on her desk. A map at the left top corner catches his attention. Everything else on the desk is touching at least three other things, if it's not simply piled up or pushed aside haphazardly. The map's been spared this treatment, however, and its invaluableness is told by its prominence. The two paperweights holding it open are placed with obvious ceremony; they're also warding off the map's centuried habit of curling.

The map itself depicts borders that haven't been drawn for ages. It indicates the location of cities that are no longer habited, by humans, manakete, or anything you'd want to meet.

“That's quite some research,” he says. Chorm takes a moment more to consider the scene. Then he leans down to kiss his wife. He stays down to whisper.

“We're needed as parents.”

“Hmm?” She looks at him hovering above her shoulder. One of her hands trails up his jaw, his neck, and up to his hair.

“It's Lucina.”

“What is it? Does she want to go on another ride?”

“No. She's done something.”

She stiffens and shifts, clearly surprised, but he silences her with another quick kiss before she can manage to stress herself. And it works, for she yields to the tension in her momentarily hunched shoulders.

“She didn't do anything too bad. She just let her bird out, and the maids had to to chase it down.”

“We never told her not to open the cage, did we?”

“Yes, and that was our oversight. So I want us to both be there to talk to her so she knows why we're disappointed. And why she's going to be punished.”

“Do you think she'll really understand?”

“She's getting there. I want you with me. I want to be discipling her in the same way, from the start. In this, as in all things, we're a team.”

“Yes,” she says, and she smiles to herself. “But you're her father. Aren't you supposed to be the stern one?”

He sighs and is no longer looking at her.

And she immediately regrets saying it. Light teasing, maybe, but how insensitive to make such a comment. She expects that, once again, she's reminded him of him and his father, that time, that relationship. _That_ is an intimate sore only those who're close to him can be near enough to scratch until it bleeds. To reconcile she quickly reaches for his hand.

Looking down again, what he does say is, “I don't want any split-parenting. She might learn to go to you when she doesn't like what I have to say. She might learn to go to me when she doesn't like what you have to say. I don't want that.”

“That's fair enough.” She kisses his hand, and smiles as she holds his dry knuckles to her chapped lips.“I'll be with you in a moment. Let me just finish this outline.”

“Robin, you've already written a volume about Valm.”

“Yes, and you and every literate person in Ylisse has already read dozens of them.”

“No, not dozens,” Chrom says. “Not even a dozen. Nobody thinks that you've fallen behind.” Reverently, he takes the quill from her hand that lays limp on the desk, and he places the pegasus feather on a strip of bare mahogany. He knows that he's disarming her with this unassuming action, that he's taking away her means of offence and defence these days. “You're doing fine, Robin.”

She says nothing, but she doesn't allow him to pull her up.

So he tries again.

He pulls away from her, steps back, and moves around to the other side of the chair.

The loss of contact leaves her suddenly responsive, she looks up and leans back into the warmth and space that lingers. He feels a jolt of guilt—the look in her eye is more remorseful than he can bare, but he speaks again before she can say anything. “I need you to know that you're doing a good job, my love. And, to speak frankly, your stubbornness is aggravating.”

She nods, slowly. Considers. Says low, almost inaudible, “Are we having an argument?”

“Not unless you think we are.”

“No.”

“Then we aren't,” he says. “ You just don't...It's not that you're not listening, but you're not hearing me. And right now there's something that we have to deal with. I need my partner.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, and now she lets herself be pulled up by him.

Chrom still has a good deal of guilt. Even if justifiable, hurting her a little hurts him exponentially. (And it's a high exponent, for his stomach is aching.) Flushed, he tries pulling her in for an embrace in a gesture of goodwill.

“You're a good parent,” she says with her head nestled under his chin.

“I want _us_ to be good parents.”

“Maybe I can be one. Could be one, if I weren't such a—”

And Chrom laughs. He cares about what her clerk thinks of her dignity, so before they say anything too loudly he whisks them out of the room and down the hall. “Come on. I'm not looking forward to this either. Honestly, I'm not sure I can manage it...”

She's absent a moment, as he babbles.

“Chrom?”

“Robin?”

“There might be something else for us.”

They turn another corner, he tilts his head. “Something else? How do you mean?”

He keeps walking and talking, but she stops right there, she stops and holds onto him and makes him pause too. It's midday; the hall's windows are open in the hope of catching a summer breeze. They are by a painting of war.

She raises her head. She looks him in the eye. “I'm two weeks late. You're the only one else who knows.”

He embraces her, he picks her up, he lifts her high and rests his head against her stomach. His blue cloak swirls around them, her purple gown flares out, and she looks down at him and at that achingly fond expression of his. Quite suddenly she's breathless, and it takes her some seconds to finally reach out and grab onto his shoulders for support.

He tells her that this the best news he could ever ask for, that they could ever ask for.

The way he says it, she doesn't doubt it.

 

.

 

“And it will only be this one time if you don't let Bird out again,” Chrom says to his daughter. He's crouching before her, while her mother stands right by his side. “You have to be responsible. Something could have happened to Bird.”

“L-like a broken wing?”

“Yes, it could. Or something even worse.”

“Or, C-chelsa told me that one of the castle's c-cats might get her,” Lucina says, doing her best to choke back her sobs. She pauses to compose herself. “'nd then I could never see her again,” she finishes explaining with great solemnity and guilt that weigh more than her.

“Yes, that could happen as well. Now can you tell me what we are telling you?”

Lucina hesitates. Her gaze drops to her feet and travels to her father's empty belt to where Falchion would be. “Um. Be responsible. 'nd I can keep having sword lessons as long as I am.”

“And why's being responsible important?”

“'Cause. You said so.”

He frowns at her.

“Uh, uh---'nd, 'nd, Falchion's gotta have a responsible caretaker.”

“Very good,” Chrom says. He relaxes his body language consciously. Within moments Lucina picks up on that and, like the chastened child she is, she immediately seeks her parents' forgiveness and protection. He picks her up, and he turns to his wife. “But we're not done quite yet.”

“No, not quite,” Robin says to her daughter. She leans in as Lucina looks quizzically at her. Quizzically, and a little warily. She'd thought she was already done being talked to, this extra bit was unforeseen, now she cannot trust her parents to be predictable. Robin smiles. “You see, it's important that you're responsible. Me and Father are going to need you to be a good big sister.”

“But I don't have a sister or brother,” Lucina says. She looks at her dad, but he doesn't help her.

“But you will, soon. Mother and Father have a new little sibling for you on the way.”

For a moment, Lucina thinks about this. Then she asks the most important question, “Is it a brother or a sister?”

“We won't know for a while, my sweetheart. We haven't gotten our letter back in the post yet.”

Chrom says, “Whether it's a sister or a brother, they're going to love you very much. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I have to love them even more,” Lucina says. “Even more than you guys love each other.”

 

.

 

That evening, rumours of an invasion of Ferox's coast are confirmed. Valm is on the move.

**Author's Note:**

> Yo! So in case you recognise this series and are now wondering what's up with the updates so randomly, I, after finally playing FE:A again, have decided to proof and post the rest of this series up on ao3. While I regret that I can't say that this series is some of my best work—which, thanks to hindsight being truly 20/20 is easy to see—I'm not going to dramatically alter the substance of this series too much beyond editing and some reconstruction. Rather I am starting another series I said I would start some time ago, and it will be informed by some ideas I have had while going over this series again. I simply think that given the integrity of the structure of this series so far, it would be better to leave it as it is. However I will finish this series, so there's at least one reason to give it a whirl this time around if you'd care to.
> 
> Cheers!


End file.
